


Post Mission Seventy

by indigo (indigo_angels)



Series: Mission Arc [17]
Category: The A-Team (2010), The A-Team - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 19:22:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18723367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigo_angels/pseuds/indigo
Summary: Mission Seventy wasn't an easy one, especially for Face, and the spectres will haunt him for longer than the team realise.Warning for violent situations - not explicitly described.





	Post Mission Seventy

Hannibal blinked awake. He knew he’d been sleeping, even though he’d been so determined not to. But then… they’d been on the go for so long, gone without sleep for so many days, seen so many things, _done_ so many things… how could he not succumb to the need for rest?

 

The same couldn’t be said for everyone though and Hannibal's thoughts went straight to his team. He lifted his head and blinked around in the half-light of the aircraft hangar. There were bodies everywhere, one hundred and fifty men from a range of nations and specialisms all having spent the last few weeks working together, all now waiting for their rides out once morning came. They were simply sprawled out all over the floor, too exhausted to care, the room filled with a collection of snuffles and snores, grunts and groans. Hannibal could have asked Face to try and get them somewhere better, but one look at the kid’s chalk expression and he just couldn’t.

 

As his mind turned to Face, Hannibal let his eyes flick around the sleeping bodies surrounding him, a jumbled mass of tumbled limbs, a sea of olive and black, a strong stench of body odour and yes, there was Murdock, wound into a dense little ball, BA pressed tightly against his back, his forehead creased into a frown even as he slept but – Hannibal's eyes skipped around – no Face.

 

He sighed, paused, and then grimaced as he carefully rose to his feet, wincing at the post-mission-pain that ran through his body, his nose turning at the disgusting way his filthy clothes tugged and snagged on his equally filthy skin – he doubted he’d ever been quite so desperate to get home after a mission – and started to make his way through the carpet of service-folk. It was slow going; Hannibal’s feet were known for their size and any one of these warriors laid here had the potential to react with the utmost violence should they be awakened by a size twelve boot on their fingers. He completed his mission unscathed, though, and made for the huge hangar doors, nodding to the poor sods who’d drawn sentry duty and following their pointing cigarettes until he could just make out the lone figure standing and staring off to the west.

 

His heart was heavy as he strode forward, making sure his arrival could be heard. It was a familiar Face-pose, hands in his pockets, eyes on the horizon, his mind a million miles away and full of horror and self-recrimination. Hannibal hated that Face did this to himself, that he second guessed every move he made, every decision and every result of a frantic mish-mash of mission goals and scrambles for survival. There was a time when he hadn’t, when he’d just ploughed through life and missions with his head down and his sense packed safely away. At the time, it had frustrated the hell out of Hannibal, he’d wished and wanted and lectured and bitched, hoping, desperate, that Face would finally grow up a little and use his sharp brain for something other than devising his next con. That maturity had eventually arrived, but with it had come the most dreadful weight of _responsibility_ , one that Face struggled so hard to cope with. And after this mission, Hannibal shuddered, it was no wonder that the kid wasn’t sleeping.

 

“Hey, sweetheart.” His voice was low, he was certain no one was in ear shot but it always paid to be so very careful. It was a deliberate plot though, to use that endearment, something they never did on a mission, Face needed to know that this horror was over, that they had survived more-or-less intact and were going home. Hannibal had told him that, of course, but sometimes Face needed the message repeating on every level.

 

He didn’t move, there was no flicker in his posture that indicated he’d even heard Hannibal’s words and, trying not to sigh, Hannibal stood next to him, shoulder to shoulder, his own eyes turned to the pitch-silhouettes of the mountains, outlines of black in the indigo night.

 

They held their silence. Hannibal was pulsing in exhaustion and honestly felt that he could have fallen asleep where he stood if it wasn’t for Face next to him, ramrod straight, his stiff shoulders swaying ever so slightly with the breeze that slid around them and, frowning, Hannibal turned his head to study him.

 

Shit – the kid looked awful. His face was streaked in grime and the remnants of the grease-paint they’d applied so many days ago but the shades of grey only made his red-rimmed eyes stand out all the more – ghastly in the half-light. His usual artful stubble was right on the edge of a beard and it aged him, his cheeks were hollowed with dehydration and he just looked so damn _tragic_.

 

Hannibal tried again, “Face,” and this time he reached his hand out and gently squeezed a rigid elbow. It took a while, thirty whole seconds maybe, before Face turned and blinked at him, seeing him for the first time but there was no welcoming smile, no sign of anything other than despair in those deadened eyes.

 

“Boss,” and with that he went back to staring at the mountains.

 

“’Copters aren’t due for another eight hours.”

 

“I know.”

 

“So, come in and get some sleep.”

 

“I’m fine.”

 

He wasn’t though, and Hannibal stood at his side and started back-tracking through the last few days of frantic withdrawing, the post-mission scrabble for survival, sifting through his memories for when Face had eaten and drank, when he had slept and the results were depressing. Hannibal had been preoccupied, not only with getting his own team out but also the others they were travelling with and, as such, had taken his mind off his Lieutenant. Face had been _Face_ , had been doing just what Hannibal always needed him to be doing, picking up the slack, backing Hannibal up, being there to offer anything that needed offering. He’d been busy, they all had, and Hannibal had noticed that haunted look in the kid’s eyes but what he hadn’t spotted was the lack of care he’d given himself, the way that Face had let the ghouls right inside himself, welcomed them in until they were all he was.

 

Hannibal let out a long sigh and tightened the grip on Face’s elbow, drawing him away from the yawning vista, pulling him, unresisting, until they were a safe distance from the hangar, hidden from prying eyes, leaning him up against the timbered wall of a supply shed and shifting himself until he was all the kid could see. “Face,” but those troubled eyes wouldn’t look at him. “Kid…”

 

“I’m fine,” it was like a mantra.

 

Hannibal tried again, “Temp,” but that only made things worse, made the anguish in Face’s eyes all the more pronounced and then there was nothing that Hannibal could do but gather him in, pull that taut body up against his own and try to warm the demons out, try to bring him back that way.

 

“You need to sleep.”

 

“I’m fine.”

 

He absolutely wasn’t and Hannibal knew why, knew, out of all the horror and terror they’d experienced these last weeks, the one precise point that had pushed Face right to the very edge and made him too damn petrified of what was in his own head to even consider sleeping. Hannibal had wanted to wait until they were home to attack this particular poison, had wanted to have them both wrapped up together in the dark and the warmth of their own little house before he even tried to get Face to let it all out but it was clear now that that wasn’t an option, it was clear that – if he wanted Face to avoid a full-on crash and burn - then he needed to deal with this. Immediately.

 

He pulled back slightly, made sure his left arm was still tight around the kid’s waist, was still holding him securely, but he let his right hand drift upwards, tracing the familiar outline of body armour and beard until it was resting on a cold cheek, thumb gently stroking at a rare patch of clean skin just under his eye. “Face,” he whispered again and this time saw the blink, the resisting, and the thinning of Face’s lips that told him the kid was fighting him. “Please. Sweetheart, look at me,” still nothing. “I _need_ you to look at me,” a flicker, Face needed to be needed. “Baby, please, come on, Face…”

 

Hannibal watched, saw the gathering of tears in those stark eyes and pressed slightly, feeling the prickle of beard against his palm as he turned his boy, gently, softly and finally Face was looking at him, his empty eyes beseeching Hannibal to help him. "It's okay,” he whispered, relieved, at last, that Face was listening to him but Face shook his head.

 

“I killed you.”

 

And there it was, the barb that Hannibal had known was there, digging into Face’s flesh all this time, causing so much fear and agony.

 

“You didn’t,” he forced out a smile. “I’m here, right? Right here, with you,” but Face shook his head.

 

“I shot you. Right here,” a shaky hand reached up and tapped the centre of Face's own forehead. “A kill shot. I lay there, on my belly, and decided that that was all I could do. That was it. That was the fucking sum of all I had to save you.”

 

There was anger then, leeching out through Face's words and Hannibal thought that maybe that was better, maybe that was a way out. He didn’t stoke it though, he just rubbed his thumb over that smooth skin, gentle, soothing. “It wasn’t me.”  

 

“I _know_ that!” definite anger. “But if it _had_ been you, I’d have still done it, I _did_ do it! Jesus Christ, Hannibal! Don’t you see that? Don’t you see what I did? I fucking _killed_ you!” And this was why Hannibal had wanted to wait until they were home to go over this. They might have found a tiny corner of their own but this wasn’t private, this wasn’t safe and Hannibal couldn’t let Face have this melt-down here and now, no matter how much it might help him in the long-run.

 

“Come here,” he pulled him in once more, a hand around his waist, and hand cradling his skull and rocked him gently, whispering soothing nonsense in his ear as Face clung to him, totally unable to cope with the horror of what he’d done. Hannibal hadn’t known it all, had only had the vaguest of explanations from his edgy-looking second, but now it was all so horrifically clear.

 

They’d split up. Face had taken the lead of another team of Rangers whose CO had been side-lined earlier in the mission. Nothing went as it should have done, though. One of the advance parties had triggered a motion-sensor and a hastily arranged ambush was thrown their way. The teams scrambled, some men were cut down by bullets, a couple of tragically unlucky ones were caught and hauled away in trucks. One of these was Sergeant Bo Svenson, six foot two, close-cropped, white-blond hair, Ranger… it was easy, in the panic and the dusk, to mistake him for Hannibal.

 

The screams caught everyone’s attention as they were designed to do. Svenson and his compatriot, Jenks, were thrown into a compound with the dogs, starving, vicious dogs that were on them both in seconds. Hannibal had watched, appalled, through his binoculars, even as he assigned a rescue party he knew damn well was a lost-cause. It seemed that Jenks was the luckier of the two, after a minute of frantic screaming, his body was limp, his mind unaware as the dogs tore through his flesh. Not so much Svenson. He couldn’t keep the screams inside as the pack worried him and brought him down, dragging at him, fighting over him, their muzzles bright in blood, their pack mentality taking over.

 

Rescue was still at least fifteen minutes off. There were plenty of remaining hostiles who were trying to pick off the rest of their attackers and there was still a mission to complete. Hannibal knew that the barbaric murders had been set up as a distraction and, as such, he couldn’t let that be what brought the whole mission down. But still – he couldn’t do _nothing._

When the shots started and the dogs began to fall he’d known it was Face. No one else could shoot like that, no one else would even consider trying to take out a pack of thirty dogs from a mile and a half away with a sniper rifle. It was hopeless though. The dogs weren’t phased by their falling pack members and there were just too many of them. Svenson was on his knees, trying to keep them off him but he was failing fast, Hannibal knew that it was almost over, that Svenson had maybe seconds left before they overwhelmed him and tore him apart as he screamed and he’d never felt more helpless in his whole life.

 

And then there was another shot, a single, final crack that rang out through the night and Svenson’s final scream was choked off midway through. In the blink of an eye he was gone, swallowed up by the snarling, snapping pack and an explosion behind him had Hannibal turning away and back to the job. He had known what that final shot had been, saluted Face’s bravery, but hadn’t known about the misinterpretation at that point. He’d never really discussed it with the kid either, it was Murdock who’d explained it all to him, how Face had only found out Hannibal was alive forty minutes later when the Colonel had shouted up the withdrawal on the comms. link. He’d known it would need dealing with, had seen the horror in Face’s eyes but had hoped that the relief of knowing Hannibal was alive would temper all of that. It appeared he’d been very, very wrong.

 

“It’s okay,” he soothed, hand stroking up and down a rigid back. “Me or him. There was nothing more you could have done for either of us. You helped. You made a difference. You did. And don’t forget that it wasn’t you who put him in that situation in the first place.”

 

It was true, and Hannibal was furious about it. The fact that none of the perpetrators had been left at liberty at the end of it all was nothing compared to the fact that there was nothing to take back home for the families of the fallen men. But still, none of that was Face’s doing.

 

Face didn’t answer; he couldn’t and Hannibal understood that. They just had to get through this next day and then they would deal and Hannibal would make sure the kid slept, even if he had to damn well drug him to make him do it.

 

Two days later and the storm had passed. Hannibal was sitting up in bed listening to the dawn chorus with a clean, fed and exhausted Face asleep on his belly. There had been shouting, yes, and even a bit of shoving. Crying, yelling, denial and finally, acceptance. Face had eventually fallen asleep eighteen hours ago and, after catching up on some much-needed rest himself, Hannibal had been happy to sit up, watch him sleep and thank God that they’d both made it out alive again. Until the next mission of course…


End file.
